


Our Cage of Flowers

by sakvnosuke



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Depressing, Flowers, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Injury, Post-Canon, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Manga Spoilers, i take your canon and said "how do i make this Worse", like... real depressing. not a nice fic, pain and suffering, up to chapter 134
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:21:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakvnosuke/pseuds/sakvnosuke
Summary: Among unmoving giant bodies, under the cage of the world's destroyer, a lone flower witnessed their silent conversation."Tell me, am I the bad guy?”
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	Our Cage of Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> not in the right headspace as i'm writing this, but. yeah. s4 aot soon i am passing away now

They both landed almost at the same time, on this steaming ground made of unmoving giant bodies. Bodies of their people, the ones who had caged them, the ones who had protected them, the ones who had stomped the rest of the world to oblivion. The air was hot, and Armin knew some of the burns Mikasa had would probably never heal, unlike his own, badly burnt body.

Still, the girl was the one who ran first, to the large cage of carcass in front of them, the tallest one still standing among this crunched earth.

Armin ran after her, willingly going into the Founding Titan’s skeleton, eyes fixed on Mikasa. Whose eyes were fixed on the lump in the center of the cage.

Eren’s eyes opened slightly as they approached, and he gave them a small smile, somehow.

“Hey,” his voice was only a little bit louder than a whisper. Glassy jade eyes turned to Mikasa, “You’re still wearing that scarf.”

Mikasa choked on something inside her throat, and Armin felt himself replicating it.

Mikasa’s hands trembled as she unwrapped the weathered scarf from her neck, crouching down beside Eren. She wrapped the black fabric—it used to be red, but somewhere along the way black overcame the vibrant color, like it had engulfed their little dream—around Eren’s neck, like it would make up for his lack of body from the neck down.

Eren blinked at the gesture. Mikasa carefully avoided his gaze.

“You know, I lied.” Eren started, his voice seemingly being the loudest thing filling this hollow space. “About the Ackermans finding master, thing. I made it up.” He let out a snort as dry as the desert. “I thought… if I drove you off, it would be less painful.”

“You haven’t answered my question from that day,” Armin noticed Mikasa’s subtle flinch, but Eren continued anyway. “Mikasa… why do you care so much about me?”

Mikasa bit her lips. Armin was going to open his when she said, slowly, quietly, with tremor matching that of her hand that was gripping the scarf, “Was it that hard to understand?”

Hissing steam filled the brief silence, before the girl continued, “That day… years ago, that chilly night when you wrapped the scarf around me.” Her grip tightened, her voice losing a little of its tremble, “You gave me a home.”

Her gaze met Eren’s again. Something unsaid passed between them. “I’m—I was just. Trying to protect that home.”

Armin witnessed as Eren’s mouth opened in a soundless ‘ah’, before taking a melancholic smile. “Then… I’m sorry for taking that home from you.”

Mikasa had tears streaming down her cheeks as she looked away again.

“Armin,” Armin hummed at being addressed, his hand tentatively moving to grip on the other end of the scarf. “For what it’s worth… I’m sorry for calling you useless. You are the furthest thing from that, you are the best of us, and it’s the truth.”

Armin hummed again in lieu of response, focusing instead on the decaying thread under his palm. He couldn’t find the energy in him to dispute Eren’s claim.

“You have to believe it,” Eren continued like he knew Armin was disagreeing. “It was the right decision to save you that day. If you weren’t saved, no one would’ve stopped me today. You—”

“Can you stop right there?” Armin surprised himself—and if he focused hard enough, surprised Mikasa and Eren, too—by the way his voice cut through Eren’s words. “Just—stop. I don’t wanna hear this. Not now.”

“Right,” Eren’s voice took the low whisper again, from the full of conviction one he had used to speak to Armin. “Right. Sorry.”

His sorry wouldn’t bring back the rest of the world, and the three of them knew that. No one dared to say it out loud.

“In the end… I just bring suffering to everyone else, huh.” Jade green stared upwards, to the blue hidden behind black smoke and lined by bones. “Until the end… I’m always trapped inside walls.”

Tears, matching Mikasa’s and Armin’s finally pouring over titan marks, wetting disheveled hair. “That day… I was genuine when I said that you are all the ones most important to me. But still I’m the one to bring everyone’s demise.”

He laughed, breathless and humorless and cracking through the silence like thunder. Dissolving to sobs. “Armin… You’ve always been the smartest one of us… Tell me, am I the bad guy?”

Armin sucked in a breath edging to his own sobs, the image of them—the three of them, the six of them, the nine of them, and so on, everyone they had lost—flashed before his eyes. The reality of their crushed earth stared back.

He did not have an answer to that. “I don’t know.”

“I see.” Eren murmured, like he had expected the answer. "At least... we got to see our sea, right?"

Silence stretched longer after that, with none of them looking at the other, each more interested in the soil, or the sky, or the lone flower standing weakly near their huddle.

Armin stared at the petals clinging for dear life, under the carcass of humanity’s destroyer, the sole survivor among the giant footprints.

A single, miserable hyacinth, wilting slightly. Its purple color remained stark against the charcoal ground.

His mind unwillingly recalled back to a page he’d read of a book from his time spent among the Marleyans. A book about the language of flowers, how humans invented meanings for different flowers, for different colors, so they could express what they want to say without really saying it.

Another wave of tears blurred Armin’s vision, as he remembered the meaning of this particular flower.

“I no longer have the right to say this, but,” Eren choked on a sob, “You two… keep living, would you?”

The flower that used to fill the fields in Shiganshina, azalea: a wish to return to home, of a fragile growing passion, and the care of family.

“You’re so stupid, Eren.” Mikasa’s whisper were filled with cracks none of them could fill. “So, so stupid.”

The flower that grew around their training camp, the colorful addition to their hardy days, chrysanthemum: of showing support, growing friendship, and longevity.

“I know.” Eren’s voice grew quieter, along with his drooping eyes. “Thank you… for stopping me. For still being here.”

The lone flower surviving the rumble, nodding along to the wafting smoke, purple hyacinth: for sorrow, sorry, regret; _please forgive me_.

The bones caging them dispersed into thin air along with Eren’s closed eyelids, and Mikasa’s wail tore through the open sky. Once again, Armin sat there unmoving, still useless until the end.

**Author's Note:**

> (throws purple hyacinth at you readers) yeah
> 
> just to be clear. i don't hate eren. it's just. can you justify giving him a good ending after the shit he pulled. can you. anyway i'm not talking about this here i won't stop if i do
> 
> leave kudos... yell at me in the comments.. yell at me on [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/sakvnosuke),


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